


Setting the melody on its forward course again

by beanarie



Series: Entropy [2]
Category: White Collar
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It, Gen, Major Character Injury, Series Finale, Sick Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-22
Updated: 2020-08-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:28:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26038681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beanarie/pseuds/beanarie
Summary: He makes lazy circles in the air with his fingers, reminding her she has yet to ask him anything. Well, he's going to have to be patient. She has to build a case, which requires presenting the facts.
Relationships: Elizabeth Burke & Neal Caffrey
Series: Entropy [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1890100
Comments: 6
Kudos: 45





	Setting the melody on its forward course again

**Author's Note:**

> i just want elizabeth and neal to be buds like they were in the first half of the show.

Her husband walks in the door at a quarter past eleven, looks at her, and instantly starts crying. In a lifetime of many traumatic firsts (poisoning, kidnapping, non-consensual drug use), this is new. Still, Elizabeth takes control without having to think about it, starting with guiding Peter to the sink and helping him wash the blood off his hands. 

At three AM they're on the couch with his head in her lap, and Diana calls from the hospital to say it was touch and go, but Neal made it through surgery. Peter blinks for the first time in what feels like hours, thanks her, and promises to relieve her at four. Elizabeth puts on a pot of coffee and gets him to eat an eighth of a nearly stale bagel before he trudges out the door. 

That was four days ago. Now Elizabeth sits in a squeaky pleather chair watching as the other occupant in the room rejoins the land of the conscious, first frowning, then stirring before he opens his eyes and recognizes he isn't alone.

After getting a sip of water from the nearby tray, he hides his surprise with a tiny, confidential smile. Like they share a secret. "You got him to go home?"

"I told him if he slept on that bench one more night I'd name the baby Axl Rose."

"You don't even like Guns n Roses."

"I did. You don't know my past, Neal Caffrey."

He falls silent. There was a little more heat in that comeback than she intended. As he studies the middle distance, running down the clock on the awkward moment, she studies him. 

"Have you just been staring at me this whole time," he asks. 

"You said goodbye to me."

"You would've preferred I hadn't?"

"Don't answer a question with a question."

"You... didn't ask a question." He sighs at her stony silence and runs a hand through his hair. "I'm not particularly up for this, Elizabeth."

"I don't particularly care." She lifts her chin, unashamed. "I'm not mad." A lie. "I won't yell at a friend who almost coded less than a week ago." Hopefully not a lie. "I'd just like to know."

He makes lazy circles in the air with his fingers, reminding her she has yet to ask him anything. Well, he's going to have to be patient. She has to build a case, which requires presenting the facts. 

"You left with Keller without Peter's knowledge, but had your tracker on."

"Hospital staff discovered you were wearing a bulletproof vest complete, with a bullet in it, along with a squib holding trace amounts of red fluid."

He runs a hand along the middle of his chest almost absently, and she remembers that vests don't prevent bruises, or sometimes even cracked ribs.

"Mozzie said you gave him something significant from your past right before the bust, and he witnessed you and June having a moment he described as elaborately sentimental."

"Still waiting," he says.

"You were going to fake your death--in _Peter's arms_ \--because you couldn't figure out how to have a normal life after the anklet comes off and I only got a goodbye because I called you."

Neal is quiet for a long time. "It wasn't-" 

"What?"

"It wasn't supposed to be in his arms, or even in front of him."

"Tell that to his nightmares," she snaps. He just looks away and her stomach drops. "You're going to try again." She stands, letting her bag fall from her lap and crash on the floor. "Oh my God. _That's_ why Peter wouldn't leave until Clinton and Diana promised to keep his seat warm out there. He fully believes you're going to die the second his back is turned and he'll never know if you really took a turn or you paid some desperate resident to shoot you up with a sedative, declare a time of death, and toss you on a slab. And he's not wrong. Are you out of your mind?"

So much for not yelling at her ill friend. An orderly pokes his head in the door. Immediately she sits and gathers her things. Neal snickers at her promise to be good and she lets it go without comment. He can have that.

"What happened here?" She waves back and forth between them. "You used to talk to me. I've never been your priest or anything, but are you kidding? You let yourself get so freaked out you're willing to slam on the nuclear option twice? You could've told me _some_ of it."

He meets her eyes, not angrily, but steadily, as a sort of challenge. _You know exactly what happened_. In the interest of full disclosure, remembering requires very little effort once she thinks about it. Surroundings uncomfortably similar to these, words she isn't sure she would take back if she could because she doesn't regret where she and Peter ended up. The distance may not have started there, precisely, but Neal never let his walls down past a certain level after that day.

She counts to ten, forcing some of this emotional noise to go quiet so she doesn't misspeak and make things worse. "So it's fairly well established that my husband loves you. I guess it hasn't been clear lately that I also care for you a great deal. Just because it's less intense than what you and Peter have together, and sometimes I _have_ to put him first, it doesn't mean you're not important to me, or that I don't consider you family as well." She shakes her head. "Goodbye, that's all you said. That's all there was to say."

Judging him on that moment alone isn't fair, given that he'd lost like a full liter of blood at that point. She gets that. It's more knowing he had intended on leaving her with nothing. 

"The plan may have included an email draft expounding on your kindness and your banana nut muffins that Moz would've found a month later and sent to you."

She stands up and walks toward the bed. "Did it?"

He shifts in discomfort, his hand twitching like he wants to remove the IV and run as far as he can. "No."

"What about plan b?"

Finally, he breaks. "You don't understand. I can't be here."

All the things he's kept under lock and key these last few weeks are evident in the catches in his breath and the tremors running through his body. He digs his fingers into his blanketed knees, trying so hard to get it back under control, but she can't let him because if she does this could be the last conversation they ever have. He didn't tell a soul what he was planning, even Mozzie. Any one of them would've talked him out of it, and he's well aware. 

Here's her chance. "Neal?" She lays a hand to his face and after a moment he turns into the touch, breaking her heart. Funny how this man the entire world seems to love can be so starved for affection. "You're going to tell me so I can help."


End file.
